Middle East Looking Ahead: The Future of the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI)

Friday November 14, 12:00-1:15, Russell Senate Office Building, Room 188

On Friday, the Project on Middle East Democracy held a lunch briefing for Congressional staff entitled “Looking Ahead: The Future of the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).” The two featured speakers were Scott Carpenter, Keston Family fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and previously Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and head of the Middle East Partnership Initiative from 2004 to 2007; and Les Campbell, Senior Associate at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and regional director for NDI’s programs in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); the discussion was moderated by Stephen McInerney, Director of Advocacy at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

Scott Carpenter organized his presentation around four key questions: Why is MEPI needed? Why was it placed in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA)? How is it different than other institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)? And, where will it go from here?

On the first question, he began by saying after 9/11 the Bush Administration examined its relationship with countries in the Middle East and realized the need to move past issues of security and energy concerns. The idea for MEPI existed prior to 9/11, but was given higher priority after that time. The Arab Human Development Report also came out at the same time, declaring that “the pathologies that affected the region” could no longer be ignored, from the economy to the state of education. This confluence of factors led to a conscious decision to change foreign policy in the Arab world.

Existing organizations for moving forward in the Middle East were hampered by various factors: the NED did not cover educational programs or female empowerment, while USAID operated only through bilateral government-to-government relationships and only in six of the region’s 22 countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Morocco, West Bank/Gaza, Jordan; it does not work at all in places like Saudi Arabia, Algeria, or Kuwait.

Hence Carpenter cited a gap, requiring a new conversation - a “partnership” - with the region focusing on empowering civil society. Hence the creation of MEPI, to fill that gap, and founded with four “pillars” of focus: democracy, economy, education, and women’s empowerment.

Moving to the second question, he noted that the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) had always operated with a narrow vision of security and energy, and was in 2002 the smallest regional bureau in the State Department, in terms of staff and resources. As Carpenter put it, the State Department didn’t need a huge staff in order to interact with the Middle East, because we only had to deal with a few people in each country – the dictator and his deputies. The traditional role of NEA, and the State Department more broadly, in the Middle East was to maintain bilateral relationships with autocratic regimes. Secretary of State Colin Powell was initially opposed to the idea of MEPI, thinking it would irritate governments in the region, undermining our diplomatic efforts there. However, following 9/11 and the broader recognition of the need for a shift on U.S. policy in the region, Powell and the State Department became more supportive.

Conventional wisdom might have put MEPI under the supervision of the Under Secretary for Global Affairs, at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), a bureau created by Congress, without the same direct ties to the embassies as the regional bureaus. However, the administration was not interested in merely developing another series of programs, but impacting policy toward the region, largely formulated within NEA. What were our ambassadors actually saying in foreign offices? Because of its location in NEA, MEPI has foreign service officers working on the ground in each embassy.

USAID, on the other hand, is very different. USAID has bilateral programs which are negotiated with foreign governments. These tend to be large infrastructure programs or financial sector reform projects that do not engage civil society or involve political work on the grassroots level. USAID also does not operate in every country in the Middle East, and by definition, cannot function on a regional level or carry out multination projects either.

MEPI began without a clear strategy, only an initial framework based on the four “pillars,” but it gradually improved its effectiveness as it developed a staff and resources, shifted grant-making from Washington to its two offices in the region, and increasingly moved to erode the bureaucratic approach of treating each country as a separate entity, replacing it with a transcendent, regional vision on issues of relevance.

Funding for MEPI has gone up and down since its inception, making it hard to have a consistent set of objectives, but it is starting to have a clear impact in the region, and is seen as a positive force for change. Carpenter noted that less than 1% of what is spent in Iraq is spent on democracy promotion annually around the world. At the critical time of transition to a new administration, he concluded by declaring that MEPI should not only continue, but given a “steroid injection,” since “we have Al-Qaeda on the run.” He urged Congress to “double down” on MEPI and its critical role in the “war of ideas” in the Middle East, asserting that MEPI uniquely gives policymakers the tools they need to spur real change in the region.

Les Campbell provided the perspective of a nongovernmental recipient of funding for democracy programs from MEPI, and asserted that his organization, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), has thrived in its work with MEPI. He noted that some are surprised by this, because of the perception of MEPI as a partisan Bush administration initiative originally headed by Liz Cheney, while NDI is loosely affiliated with the Democratic Party. But he stressed that NDI’s working relationship with MEPI has been extremely productive, contrary to this perception.

He acknowledged skepticism in approaching an initial meeting with Liz Cheney, but they quickly reached agreement on a project for women across the region who were running for political office, which led to a variety of women’s training programs in the region run by NDI. Starting from the success of the Moroccan reforms in 2004, to Kuwaiti women obtaining the right to vote, and the strengthening of Jordanian women in parliament, Campbell said a direct line could be drawn back to MEPI on each of these reforms.

Campbell also discussed how MEPI greatly facilitated the process by which NDI could receive U.S. government support and funding for NDI’s democracy programs. Previously, NDI had to befriend the ambassador to the particular country in question, then the deputy assistant secretary, and pitch their ideas to them, often unsuccessfully. The only other option was the daunting task of “cracking the USAID vault.” USAID’s programs, however, are submitted to the foreign government for approval, invariably leading programs on serious political reform to be rejected.

Additionally Campbell said dialogue with MEPI was easier and more flexible than other agencies such as USAID. They were more engaged in the process and more willing to work with new ideas. USAID bundles huge contracts together, thus matching priorities is difficult, and oftentimes a large solicitation takes 18 months from beginning to end. He also noted that they at NDI “see a very clear differentiation” between the role of various funding sources such as USAID, the NED, DRL, and MEPI, arguing that MEPI fills a valuable niche. He agreed that MEPI has unique advantages situated within NEA, and also urged that it remain intact.

Campbell concluded with some key examples of programs that would not exist without MEPI: 1) Women’s regional schools, providing candidate training for female leadership and spurring women’s political participation and activism; 2) Palestinian Party Reform, strengthening the political organizing capacity of non-HAMAS parties in the Palestinian territories; 3) promoting democracy in Libya through support of local democracy activists through NDI and other programs over the past 18 months 4) election monitoring in Egypt by independent Egyptian organizations, which recently forced the Egyptian regime to acknowledge that turnout to vote for President Mubarak was only 23%, whereas it had previously claimed turnout in excess of 90% 5) funding reform in the Gulf, where sources of funding other than the local government are extremely limited (e.g. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia).